A high-level Iranian terrorist is killed; a complete misunderstanding of the war by the U.S, government; and our least favorite song: Congressional Chaos Reigns. A lot to cover this week, so let’s dive right in.

The Northern Front

On Monday, reports emerged that Israel had allegedly struck a building in the Iranian consular compound adjacent to their embassy in Damascus. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility. Among the multiple Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) officers killed was the highest-ranking IRGC general in Syria who oversaw Iran’s terrorist operations there and in Lebanon.

As regular readers know, Hezbollah has launched more than 1,000 attacks on Israel since the 10/7 Massacre – resulting in over 100,000 Israelis still being displaced from their homes in the North. Israel continues to respond and is not shying away from going after those leading Hezbollah’s pseudo-under-the-radar war on the Jewish state and its chief sponsor - Iran. To be clear, while it does not generate as many headlines, this is not a low-intensity conflict. Eighteen Israelis have been killed and Israel continues to take significant steps to take those responsible off the battlefield along with any advanced weaponry being introduced into the theater.   

Israel’s daring daytime strike on Iran’s Damascus-based chief terrorist could foreshadow a significant conflagration. And the Israelis, of course, are thinking the same as according to reports they’ve been stockpiling a significant amount of “emergency supply of fuel, food, and medical gear…” ostensibly in preparation for a significant Hezbollah assault or the need to preempt one. 

Munich Rules and The Southern War

As the above indicates, it’s clear that the war in Gaza is hardly a localized conflict. It stretches to Tehran, Moscow, and Washington. Therefore, what happens to Hamas impacts the future of the world. Will Hamas be allowed to survive? Will rapists and murderers walk the streets of Gaza City, honored by those who support their barbarism? Nope. To all of it.

Hamas as an organization will not survive. And Israel has seemingly adopted the Munich Rules. After Palestinian terrorists killed Israeli Olympic athletes at the 1972 Munich games, the Jewish state spent several years hunting down the terrorists who killed their sons and daughters. Now, it seems, all who planned, financed, or participated in the 10/7 Massacre will either be brought to justice or have justice brought to them.

Hamas’s last stronghold remains Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah. After the diplomatic debacle caused by President Biden’s decision to hang Israel out to dry at the UN (covered in last week’s Update), senior Israeli defense and national security officials have been once again communicating with their counterparts – with formal meetings done virtually.

The Biden administration publicly acknowledges that Hamas must be destroyed, but in the same breath claims that an invasion of Rafah, where four Hamas battalions remain along with many of the hostages, is unnecessary. The Israelis would love nothing more than to see Hamas’s defeat without sending their sons and daughters into the devil's den, and they’ve no desire to kill a single Palestinian civilian, so if the Biden administration has a good plan, the Israelis will jump at it.

Misunderstanding the Middle East

Hamas knew how this war would go (initially). They always knew that following the raping and pillaging of southern Israel, the Israelis would respond with the full force of the IDF. But Hamas also assumed the international community would be able to stop Israel from destroying the terrorist organization.

Their strategy was always to use the civilians of Gaza as human shields and the international community to pressure the U.S. and the U.S. to ultimately stop Israel. That’s why Hamas celebrates Palestinian civilian casualties and inflates the number of civilian deaths. And, as we saw at the UN last week (which Hamas publicly praised), their plan is working because the Biden administration fundamentally does not understand Hamas or their patrons in Tehran for that matter.

But, in fairness, they don’t understand Israel either. There is no threat, no U.N. resolution, no statements, nothing in the so-called diplomatic arsenal the U.S. can do to stop Israel from destroying Hamas, rescuing the hostages, and ensuring the existential threat Iran and its proxies pose is addressed.

But that does not mean that the United States is a bystander. Quite the opposite. Where the rubber meets the road is not the White House. It’s Congress.

As this missive alone indicates, we’ve no qualms with criticizing the Biden administration for their mistakes and failures (and we will credit them when deserved, for example, with continuing weapons shipments to Israel throughout the war), but that’s a nonpartisan knife.

Despite the Democrat-controlled Senate’s advancement of an emergency aid package that would enable Hamas’s destruction and likely deter a wide regional war, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has not advanced a politically feasible emergency Israel aid package.

We recognize political reality and understand the challenging position Speaker Johnson faces due to the isolationist wing of his caucus, but there are millions of Christian Zionists across the country who understand that House GOP Israel policy is being held hostage by a handful of isolationists, some of whom have a history of inflammatory and even antisemitic rhetoric. 

In the coming weeks, we look forward to the House of Representatives finding bipartisan consensus on an emergency aid package that will ensure Israel is able to overcome those who would wipe the Jewish state from the face of the earth. We would hope that as Speaker Johnson endeavors to achieve this goal, Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle ask themselves if politics or conviction should dictate their vote on whether or not the Jewish state has the means to survive and vote accordingly.

Sincerely,

The CUFI Action Fund Team